


Crop Circles

by LiterallyThePresident



Series: Connection [7]
Category: Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Genre: The author was emotional about space, started off memey but then got a lil sentimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22098865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyThePresident/pseuds/LiterallyThePresident
Summary: “ The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise.“ - Carl Sagan
Series: Connection [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566988
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	Crop Circles

“Come on, its important to us!” Dan pleaded, giving his best puppy eyes, “Pretty please?”

“You will make our entire day!” Marucho pleaded, camera at the ready, “Please please please?”

“I don’t understand why this is so important to you.” Ace huffed, arms crossed and face set, “It’s literally just crushing plants, how is that funny? How do I know you’re not pranking me?”

“Because if we were pranking you, it’d be way cooler.” Dan pouted, clasping his hands together pleadingly, “Come on, it’ll be so cool, please?”

“ _Please_ _?”_ Marucho wheedled, and Ace knew he wouldn’t hear the end of it until he agreed. He gave in with a sigh, grumbling to himself and cursing Dan’s persistence and Marucho’s scarily deep eyes. The two humans were practically bouncing on their feet with excitement as they watched him get to work. Ace reluctantly strode over to the patch of reeds that had started this whole debacle, following Dan’s giddy instructions and walking in circles with dragging feet, trampling the stalks beneath his boots. He didn’t understand this at all, but the humans were vibrating with excitement as Marucho snapped photo after photo. When Ace was finished, he surveyed his work. The center of the reed patch was stomped down in a roughly circular shape, making a little round area of flat reeds. When he turned to look at the humans for their reactions, they were whooping and cheering like he’d just won a brawl, jumping up and down with completely and utter joy. 

“Yes!” Dan cheered as Marucho yelled out with glee, “Yeah baby! Yeah!”

“Iconic!” Marucho cheered, snapping photos with a large grin, shoulders trembling with laughter. 

“We finally got it!” Dan crowed, “Actual footage of an alien making a crop circle! Eat your heart out, Buzzfeed!” Marucho collapsed into laughter, doubled over as the laughs wracked his body. Dan grinned widely and practically skipped over to Ace, clapping him on the back hard enough to make him stumble. Ace had no idea why his crushing some reeds made the humans so happy, and he hated being out of the loop. He gave his best unimpressed look and stared Dan down.

“I still don’t get it.” he crossed his arms again, “They’re reeds.”

“It’s not about the reeds.” Dan laughed, “It’s about the memes.”

“You’re not making any sense!” Ace huffed.

“We have gotta show these to Shun!” Marucho giggled, flipping through the photos he’d taken, “And the girls too. They’ll love it!”

“You guys are weird.” Ace threw his hands up, giving up on understanding, and Dan patted his back with a chuckle.

“It’s a common human conception that aliens make crop circles.” he finally explained, “We can watch some movies about of you want.”

“What?” Ace raised an eyebrow, “Why? Why would aliens make crop circles? What even is a crop circle?”

“A bigger version of that circle you just made.” Dan said chipperly, “You guys don’t tell alien stories? UFO’s? Strange encounters with possible alien ships? Conspiracy theories about the government hiding alien life?”

“We know aliens exist, why would our government lie about that?” Ace said flatly, “We’ve known about aliens for centuries. We made first contact with the neathians ages ago, and then the gundalians a little while later.” Dan gave him a blank look, and a quick glance showed Marucho staring at him with wide eyes. For once, both of the humans were completely silent.

“There... There are other aliens?” Marucho asked after a beat, his voice soft with wonder, “Besides vestals?”

“You... didn’t know?” Ace blinked, glancing between him and Dan, who both looked equally surprised, “Yeah, obviously we aren’t the only spacefaring species around. You seriously didn’t know there were others?” 

“We...” Dan tilted his head, looking genuinely taken aback, “Honestly, I think the Bakugan arrival a few years ago was humanity’s first encounter with alien life. Up until then, it was all speculation and conspiracy theories.” Ace’s eyes widened, and he gaped at them in complete disbelief.

“Wait, seriously? Your first contact was only a few years ago?” he demanded, “ _We’re_ the first aliens you’ve met?”

“Besides the Bakugan, yeah.” Marucho blinked, a small smile beginning to form, “Can you tell us more about the other aliens? What are they like? Are they peaceful? Are they humanoid? Where are they? Why aren’t any on New Vestroia?” he fired question after question, his eyes shining with interest, and Ace wondered just what he’d gotten himself into. The idea that his friends genuinely had no idea that there were other aliens out there was... oddly disconcerting.

“Do they not sleep either?” Dan asked curiously, “Since you’ve know about these other aliens for centuries but you hadn’t heard of sleep?”

“Can we meet them?” Marucho gasped, “Is there any way for us to meet some? Do they even know about humans? Are we common galactic knowledge?”

“You don’t want the gundalians to know about Earth.” he said immediately, chest clenching a little at the very thought of the warmongering race discovering his friend’s home, “They’re... warlike. They’ll conquer your planet and drain your people until there’s nothing left.” The humans wilted a little at that, excitement visibly fading.

“Oh.” Marucho said quietly, “That’s... ah.”

“Guess that means no galactic harmony.” Dan sigh, his smile weakening significantly, “So we got Mass Effect instead of Star Trek, huh?”

“I was hoping most aliens were peaceful.” Marucho looked genuinely saddened, and Ace felt a powerful urge to comfort him.

“And the neathians?” Dan asked hopefully before Ace could try, and Ace gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“They’re less violent, but currently engaged in a war with the gundalians.” he explained, “So it’s likely the only neathians you’ll encounter at this point would be refugees or deserters.”

“Well damn.” Dan lamented, “Here we are having fun with crop circles and Ace drops the ‘we aren’t alone’ bomb. Shun’s gonna be pissed he missed it.”

“Oh!” Marucho perked up a little, making an effort to shake off his melancholy, “That’s something we can do. When the others get back, you guys can fill us in in the other aliens.”

“You want to learn about them?” Ace asked, and Marucho nodded rapidly.

“I wanna learn about their technology.” he said, the light returning to his eyes at the prospect of new knowledge, “If they were spacefaring and able to make contact centuries ago, they must be very advanced. I wonder if they use the same math we do.”

“They probably have the coolest weapons.” Dan grinned, “And space ships, and Bakugan!”

“And Shun’s gonna wanna learn about their culture.” Marucho added, and Dan snorted.

“Like a nerd.”

“Well, if you really wanna learn about neathians and gundalians, I can easily find you some reading material.” Ace offered, “And when the others get back, we can all try and explain them.”

“You know, I don’t think we know all that much about vestal history.” Dan mused, and Marucho punched his arm with a sound of annoyance.

“Have you not been reading the stuff I sent you?” he asked indignantly, and Dan winced.

“They’re all so  _long_.” he complained, and Marucho huffed.

“They’re all loaded with information about vestal culture and history, no  _wonder_ you keep making social interactions awkward!”

“Stop sending me essays then!” Dan exclaimed, “You know I don’t read all that.”

“You’re lazy!”

“No, I just know how to allocate my time!”

“I bet you don’t even know what that word means!”

“Okay.” Ace sighed fondly, breaking up their argument with a slight chuckle, “So we’ll head back to the Base and wait for the others. I’ll start gathering some reading material on neathians and gundalians for you. Sound good?” Dan and Marucho exchanged looks and then nodded at him.

“Sounds good!” they bounced back from their disappointment pretty quickly, and the air was once again filled with speculation and questions about the other aliens.

Humans, Ace thought to himself as they walked back to Base. An entire race of people who, until a few years ago, had absolutely no contact with any other species beyond their planet. What must that be like? To look up at the stars and wonder if there’s anyone else out there. To look at every strange light in the sky and wonder if it’s a visitor from another world. How did they deal with the uncertainty? How did they deal with the loneliness?

Later that night, he actually read a few of the human scientific articles Marucho had sent him weeks ago, and he learned a great deal that both intrigued and distressed him. It seemed that, with a lack of galactic neighbors, the human method of seeking friends in the cosmos was to fling messages and satellites into space and hope someone found them. The  _Voyager_ satellite in particular worried him. A wandering pile of metal filled with the essence of Earth, drifting through the endless cosmos in the hopes that someone would come across it. It apparently contained human music, images and sounds of Earth, and various greetings in the many human languages. That was all well and good, understandable for a race desperate for cosmic companionship.

But that desperation and hope had a flip side as well, a flip side that had Ace unconsciously clenching his teeth. He didn’t understood how the humans would be so naive, so  _stupid_ as to not only include recordings of their brainwaves and a diagram of their anatomy in their little hello message to the stars, but a  _map to their planet’s location_ as well. How foolish, how ignorant, how... innocent. These bright creatures with big hearts and strange eyes, looking up at the stars with wide-eyed wonder, hoping against hope that they weren’t alone in the dark, sending signal after signal into space, uncaring who responded as long as  _someone_ did. They had no idea what was out there, but they believed the best in the universe. They just wanted companionship. They just wanted to not be alone.

When faced with such sincerity, such guileless faith, how could Ace not want to protect them? He thought of the soft wonder in Marucho’s eyes the first time he saw a vestal city, the excitement in Dan’s face when he realized the Resistance were real actual aliens, the way Shun’s hands trembled when he first saw Ace’s inhuman eyes. He thought of the photos he’d seen during his research tonight; a lone astronaut on a pale moon, a desert filled with massive satellite discs constantly scanning the skies, a little robot alone on a red planet,  _Voyager_ making its journey past the fringes of its home solar system, a pale blue dot suspended in a ray of sunlight. An entire planet screaming into the void, beckoning to the stars to come and play, making as much noise as possible in the hopes that someone would eventually come over to see what all the fuss was about.

“ _For small creatures such as we_ _,”_ the human voice, cracking in its ancient format, intoned to Ace from across the years, a serene smile on a harmless face, “ _the vastness is only bearable through love. ”  _

“Why?” Ace whispered pensively to himself as he hit the next clip, “Why keep looking? What if you don’t like what you find?”

“ _The universe is a pretty big place._ _”_ the long-dead human seemed to look at him from his pixelated recording, “ _If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space. ” _

“The gundalians would destroy you.” he whispered, feeling unusually emotional about a planet he’d never seen, a people he’d only ever known three of, a sentiment he’d never had to understand, “Why don’t you people care if you attract the wrong kind of attention? What would you do if you attract something bad?”

“ _Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. ” _

“Humans are idiots.” he whispered fiercely, practically jamming the next button, “Naive, hopeless, unsuspecting  _idiots_.”

“ _You're an interesting species. An interesting mix._ _”_ the human scientist still had that serene smile, and Ace felt the absurd urge to cry, “ _You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other. ” _

“Emptiness, loneliness, vastness.” Ace slammed his datapad down and gripped at his hair, “You’re alone! That’s a good thing! No one is trying to conquer you! Your worst enemy is yourself! Why the hell would you try so damned hard to find others? Why?” He didn’t understand, and anger and distress whirled in him like a storm. He didn’t know why he was reacting this way. He didn’t know why he was so emotional from a little bit of research, a few photos and videos, a few documentaries, a few sentimental words. He felt unmoored, unbalanced. As if their loneliness had leaked from the materials and into him.

“Ace?” Dan’s voice came from the entryway, yanking him from his thoughts with a knock at his door, “Hey, the others are back. Ready for alien research night?”

“I’ll be out in a second.” he rasped, clearing his throat to try and get rid of the lump that had formed.

“You alright?” Dan called, and Ace sighed.

“Yeah. Just... reading.”

“Hope you aren’t trying to start without us.” Dan’s voice was teasing, “Come on out, Mira brought snacks.” Ace glanced quickly in the mirror to make sure there was no evidence of his near emotional break before opening the door. Dan beamed when he saw him, slinging an arm around his shoulders and all but pulling him towards the warm light of the living area. Ace followed with a quiet chuckle, trying to put his disquiet out of his mind. It wouldn’t help to dwell on it.

“Thanks for coming to get me.” he said, adding with a teasing, “Glad you didn’t decide we’re boring and go alien hunting on your own.”

“No way.” Dan laughed as the voices of the others began to grow audible, “We crossed time and space to find you. We’re sticking around as long as you’ll have us.”

Ace felt a slight pricking at the corner of his eyes at that, but he pushed it aside in favor of a soft smile as he joined his friends. 

**Author's Note:**

> So the scientist the quotes are from is of course Carl Sagan, and I always get so emotional when I think about space, I cried at the first episode of Cosmos


End file.
